A Foreign Affair (16 page)

‘Aziz wants to take photographs of you – he thinks that with Bushara’s help he can print up a few hundred head cloths in time for the rally.’

‘Leave now!’ I commanded. No Yemeni was going to have an image of something a camel belched up – lank-haired and dry-mouthed – on his head cloth.

As soon as the door had closed behind the sheikh, I flicked the wishbone and jumped into the shower.

Chapter Twenty-one

Aziz was on odious form, both noisy and nervy, and a sight for sore eyes in a bilious shade of yellow. ‘Madame Roza,
habibti
– my darling! I have one ambition left in my life!’ he declared to me, as soon as he arrived in my room, armed with a tripod and a hefty shoulder bag bursting with camera equipment.

‘What would that be, Aziz?’ I asked distractedly, running a comb through my hair. ‘And would you mind keeping the volume down? I’m not feeling too well.’

‘Nothing serious, I hope?’ he answered, but in such a ludicrous stage whisper I had to laugh, ‘Madam Roza, my ambition is to make our movement the second most efficient business in all of Yemen.’

‘Only the second? Why not aim higher?’ Now that I had seen off Sheikh Ahmad’s attempt to expel me and the Imodium had taken miraculous effect, I’d begun envisaging my main role in the project to free South Yemen as that of chief motivator, cheer-leader and general whip-cracker.

‘Why not the first, you ask? Because I want to be realistic. Everyone knows that nothing in Yemen is ever going to run as efficiently as the
qat
business, although I must say that we are facing a very similar time constraint here. Just as
qat
must reach the market on the day it’s picked, thousands of our head cloths must reach the rally in Seiyun on the day they’re printed!’

‘But the rally’s today and you’re only just getting around to taking some photos of me,’ I queried impatiently, applying my mascara.

‘Magic!’ he exclaimed with a wide grin, pulling out of his camera bag - like a rabbit out of hat - a ready printed head cloth. ‘Have a look. The quality is excellent, I’m sure you’ll agree!’

For a split second I actually believed that Aziz had worked a miracle – something along the lines of the Turin shroud - but that hopeful hint of the numinous soon evaporated. ‘Aziz, you peanut brain! This is out and out fraud!’ I protested, grabbing the offending article out of his hands and hurling it all the way across my swimming pool, as far as the sofa. ‘Just because I look a lot like Princess Diana, you can’t just pretend that I am her!’

‘But what else could we do, given our deadline? It was Bushara’s brilliant idea actually to simply choose an image from the thousands on the Internet! We’ve had 1,000 printed already in Mukalla and flown up here, and we should have at least another 1,000 ready to take to Seiyun with us!’

‘But did that witless witch imagine that people won’t notice the difference between Princess Diana and me?’

‘Madame Roza, please calm yourself. You must trust me,’

In retrospect, this was the precise point at which I might have averted a dozen violent deaths, plus the creation of twice as many widows and at least four times as many orphans, simply by saying, ‘No. Actually Aziz, I don’t have to trust you,’ reminding him how distinctly untrustworthy he’d already proved himself in the matter of his father’s car radiator. How I wish now I’d refused point blank, then and there, to have anything to do with his gimcrack PR. But instead I listened and relented under the gentle pressure of a shower of perfectly sound reasons why I’d be silly not to go along with his plan.

‘Come on! Yemenis are simple and poor people without access to the Internet or
Hello
! magazine. Maybe they have heard of Princess Diana but probably they have never seen a photograph of her. Also, shortsightedness is common in Yemen and opticians very few, unlike in Syria where even the president is one, I believe. And another thing; you know how difficult it is for a white person to see the difference between one black man and another, or one Chinese man and another?’

‘Ummm’

‘Well, believe me please when I say that it is sometimes very difficult for an Arab person to see the difference between one white person and another, often impossible, in fact - and when the two white people are as similar as you and Princess Diana!...’

I was beginning to crumble. ‘But are you absolutely sure that people won’t think I’m Princess Diana returned from the dead as a ghost. A ghost could terrify people away from our cause, couldn’t it?’

‘Oh, one hundred per cent sure! We are not children, Madam Roza!’

I’m ashamed to admit that I was now fast coming round to the idea of a mass-produced image of myself minus what I have always judged to be my slightly untidy nose. After all, one could say I’d only been ably air-brushed. And I asked myself, where was the real harm in distributing two thousand Princess Diana head cloths in Nowheresville, Yemen? By the time we were rallying in important public places like Aden and even Sanaa, we’d have millions of authentic Roza Flashman ones to hand out.

‘All right, Aziz, let’s approach Saigon or wherever it is that we’re going today as a dry run, shall we?’

‘Yes, Madam Roza!’ he gasped in relief. ‘Seiyun will be our litmus test!’ Only then did I notice that the underarms of his bile- yellow shirt were soaking. Poor Aziz, I thought, he’s only doing his best for the cause. I told him I hoped he could come to regard me as an ally and partner, rather than as a volatile and demanding taskmistress.

‘... Aziz, we’re all in this together now – one for all and all for one – so support under pressure and understanding when things go wrong must be the order of the day, and a little compassion when it comes to each other’s weaknesses - which reminds me, if you could just see your way to laying your hands on a few cans of beer for me for after the rally, I’d be immensely grateful.’

He looked doubtful and worried again: ‘But I don’t think Sheikh Ahmad...’

‘Our little secret?’ I interrupted him, ‘or would you like me to kick up a fuss about the head cloths with him?’

‘Just as you say, our little secret, Madame Roza,’ he murmured, with a sigh.

‘Wonderful! Now, I need some time to gather my thoughts and plan my speech. But just before you go, I could really do with some wardrobe advice.’

‘
Al
-
hamdalillah
! Thanks be to God that you’ve asked me about this because, not only am I very gifted in this field, but your outfits are a very crucial aspect of our campaign! The colours of the independent south Yemen flag are not the same as those of the Yemeni flag; you must wear some black, white, red but also some light blue...’

‘Really? What a combination! But I suppose it can’t be helped, and green would have been even worse than light blue; I’d have had to get myself up like a Christmas tree, wouldn’t I?’ Giggling at the thought, I flung open my silver suitcase to see what I could find.

‘The dress you were wearing at al-Wuqshan’s last night was most elegant, Madame Roza,’ said Aziz tentatively.

‘What? No, no! I think we can do a bit better than that!’ Here now, what about this?’ I said, unearthing a silk chiffon zebra print top of Fiona’s, ‘This’ll take care of the black and white, won’t it?’ My baby-blue harem pants, and some red ballet shoes with lipstick to match, of course, would cover the rest and complete a feasibly attractive look, I imagined. ‘What do you think, Aziz?’ I asked him, before nipping into my en suite to change.

‘Well, the colours could not be more perfect...’

‘So what’s the problem?’

‘No problem.’

‘Good! That’s that sorted out. Now, time to think about my speech...’

Aziz was almost out of the door when we both realised at the same instant that he’d neglected to take a single photograph of me.

‘You air-head!’ I teased him, planting a kiss on his chubby cheek, ‘You’ve got ten minutes and only ten minutes, and while you’re at it you can brief me a bit, so that I have some material for my speech. I imagine I’ll be addressing a few thousand, will I?’

‘Yes, at least ten thousand, I believe, thanks to our donor owner of TeleYemen who has arranged for texts to be sent to 30,000 Hadramis,’ he said fiddling with various knobs and lenses, his hands shaking with nerves.

‘And will we be indoors or out?’

‘Without a doubt we will be outside so I am arranging a microphone and amplifier as well as an awning to keep the sun off you.’

‘How thoughtful of you! Thank you! Now just remind me, will you, when south Yemen was an independent country?’

‘From after the British left at the end of 1967 until 1990. That was our Marxist period, if you remember.’

‘Oh, yes. What happened after that?’

‘We got rid of Marx and became one, united Yemen, Madame Roza.’

‘That was better was it?’

‘No! It was not “better” – that was when our real troubles started, if you remember!’

‘You didn’t like the way they used the roundabouts in Aden – wasn’t that the problem?’ I asked, offering up my half-profile to his lens.

‘Roundabouts? I told you, they are robbers!’ Click!

‘Oh yes, now I remember – you call them barbarians, don’t you, because about half of them can’t read or write?’

‘That is not the reason why we want to separate again, Madame Roza. Is it fair to hate a person just because he is illiterate?’

‘Of course not. Is it that you want to get rid of that little president of yours?’

‘We do not discriminate against anyone in this country on account of their height, Madame Roza, and please face the camera now and stop frowning.’

‘Well, I’m sorry Aziz, I’m trying to think hard but I really don’t see exactly what the real issue is? How does anyone expect me to make a rousing speech when I’m not absolutely clear about where the real problem lies?’

‘But I haven’t got time to explain everything to you now,’ he wailed, ‘We must leave here in five minutes. I’m sure Sheikh Ahmad will be very pleased if you can say nearly the same as what you said last night at al-Wuqshan’s but at greater length and even more passion, about how much Britain loves and will support an independent free Yemen.’

‘Oh I can do that all right! I can do that standing on my head,’ I said, greatly reassured after the tiniest failure of nerve that might have been a harbinger of what lay ahead.

Chapter Twenty-two

What a relief to be back in the champagne LandCruiser, climbing those hair-pin bends up and out of the Wadi Duan, at last!

Everything I’d experienced in the less than forty-eight hours I’d spent in that Disneyland of a
wadi
with its Brazilian wax-like strip of vegetation down the middle had been so challenging! From the start, those sexy goatherds in their straw witches’ hats and gloves had set the crazy tone. Who could really blame me for drinking a drop too much at the psychedelic Buckingham Palace and winding up in Jammy’s bed? Was it any wonder my very bowels had revolted at the oddness and strain of it all? But it was time to put all that behind me now: I was back in Sheikh Ahmad’s good books, more or less, and all four wives had been left at home. There were four cardboard boxes containing two thousand freshly printed Princess Diana head cloths in the boot of the LandCruiser, and a shiny black megaphone fixed to its roof.

‘Rozzer, promise me something?’

‘Almost anything, Sheikh Ahmad,’ I answered him, recalling our mutual probationary status, but not wanting to sound uncooperative.

‘I want to ask you to take very great care with the words you use in your speech this afternoon,’ he said.

‘Nothing too high-brow? Don’t you worry! I know I’ll be addressing simple people...’

‘No, that is not what I meant, not at all. Hadramis may be uneducated but they are not simple.’

‘Oh, sorry!’ I was hurt by the tone he was using with me. I couldn’t see any need to parade his distrust of me.

‘What I mean is that it is not as easy to speak one’s political mind in Yemen as it is in England. We do not want to attract the interest of the security services by using words which could overexcite people, do we? Words like “conflict” and “battle” and “war” and “fight” should not be used – even “struggle” is too strong...’

‘So words like “revolution” and “overthrow” and “uprising” are a no-no?’

‘Precisely! God forbid! Rozzer! Even to think such words can be dangerous! The words “reform” and “change” are risky too and should be handled very carefully.’

‘So that rules out “secede” and “independence” and “separatist” too?’

‘Forget you ever knew those words if you don’t want to land us all in jail or worse!’

His mounting agitation caused me to panic: ‘But what am I going to speak about? At this rate I can’t even hint at, let alone mention, the whole
raison
d’etre
of the movement, a separate south Yemen! What, may I ask, is the point in having this rally? Will anyone mind if I witter on for twenty minutes about what the queen gets up to with her corgis?’

‘Calm yourself please, Rozzer! The elegant historical references to Britain’s love for and great interest in Yemen that you made in your speech at Wuqshan’s last night will be perfect if you enlarge and amplify them, but keep far away from anything political. It is not yet the right time to start a revolt – that may have to come later when the democratic option fails – but for now, we are only preparing some ground and gathering support,’ he instructed me. ‘And please, do not mention the queen’s dogs; Moslems believe that all dogs are unclean. They would be shocked and disgusted to learn that the Queen allows them into her palace and even into her bedroom.’

‘Yes, sir!’ I said, with a mock salute, twisting round in my passenger seat to wink at Aziz who looked even less relaxed than Sheikh Ahmad; there were now great wet patches under his armpits and down his front, deep worry furrows on his brow.

We were leaving behind the baked rocky wastes of the countryside and entering a town surrounded by groves of date palms: in the shaded doorways of white-washed blocks men lolled and slumped, their cheeks bulging and eyes rolling. The odd skinny donkey trudged in front of a cart bearing families of women in tall straw hats and children. An occasional motorbike passed in the opposite direction with a noise like a primitive rocket’s. At last, a pile of dusty plastic sandals and flip-flops outside a mosque accounted for the comparative lack of activity; the hour of qat had given way to the afternoon prayer,
asr
, Sheikh Ahmad said. ‘We have a window of three hours in which to gather our crowd, speak and then disperse before the sunset prayer, the
maghrib
,
’
he continued. ‘We’re really talking about a flash mob, aren’t we?’ I remarked, knowing I’d have to explain the concept to them. ‘Yes, Rozzer! Quite right!’ said Sheikh Ahmad once I’d enlightened him. With my heart leaping hopefully at the note grateful admiration I detected in his tone, I found it in my heart to forgive his earlier transgression.

We were reaching the centre of the little town, a vast expanse of a square that was easily dominated and partly shadowed by a gigantic white wedding cake of an edifice which he said had been built by the local mini-sultan in the 1920s, when British influence in Hadramaut was at its zenith. ‘Those mini-sultans, especially our Hadrami ones, believed they were on a level with the Indian maharajas of the British Empire – they wanted their palaces and their fancy motor cars and their sons educated in England too.’

‘Actually, the sultans of our tribes around Aden were not so grand,’ Aziz corrected him tetchily, ‘only the sultan of Dahej had palaces – two of them, one in Aden.’

‘You’re forgetting that gigantic castle the Sharif of Beihan built which is crumbling to dust now!’ Sheikh Ahmad set him straight.

I let my companions play their stress-busting game of trumping each other’s grasp of south Yemeni history and only interrupted to observe of the wedding cake, ‘It obviously owes a good deal to the Mughal style, but nothing at all to English neo-Gothic. It’s attractive, certainly, but I much prefer your
homage
to Brighton’s Pavilion, Sheikh Ahmad.’ I was seizing every opportunity that came my way to recover lost ground with the man I loved.

Aziz took a practical tack: ‘I have a plan to erect the awning and the sound system up on its first storey balcony area. That way, your speakers will be properly visible and audible to everyone here in the square below you. The caretaker’s a member of the movement and the cousin of one of my brother-in-laws. He will open the gates for us and lead us out to the balcony.’

‘
Mabruk
! - congratulations, Aziz! You have done your work very well!’ said Sheikh Ahmad, piloting the LandCruiser smoothly across the empty square and round the side of the giant wedding cake towards a pair of high iron gates.

A quick text message meant that Aziz’s relative was ready and waiting for us, a skinny, bandy-legged old fellow formally dressed in a medium weight tweed jacket over his
futa
and flip-flops, in spite of the baking heat of the day. ‘
Salaam
aleikum
! How do you do today? I hope you rested well after your excellent speech last night, madam?’ was this relic of our Yemeni Raj’s cheerful greeting. I thought I’d seen his face before.

It was soon arranged that while Sheikh Ahmad and Aziz saw to the practical arrangements – the efficient erection of the awning and sound system, the distribution points for the head cloths, the meeting and greeting of other speakers – this old Munir would see to my comfort and refreshment in one of the first storey rooms that opened onto the balcony. That suited me perfectly, because the sheikh and Aziz were starting to irritate me; Aziz was shaking with nerves, dropping microphones on his toes and having a hissy fit at the boys erecting the awning. Sheikh Ahmad was marching around, stony-faced, barking in Arabic at anyone he saw.

Munir found me an armchair that was losing its horsehair stuffing but still as grand and hard as a throne and insisted on us calmly taking ‘afternoon tea’ together. Stiffly seated on matching thrones with a low table between us and the softest of breezes wafting over us from the open French window, we sipped genteelly at our glasses of black tea while making colonial small talk. Meeting me, he said, was ‘a stroll down memory lane’ for him; while still a teenager, he’d been a personal assistant of the last British political officer in Hadramaut. Apologising profusely for the lack of the ‘most excellent McVities digestive biscuits that my dear friend Mr. Rumbelow always insisted he must have for his tea’, he proffered instead a plate of a local substitute, brand name
Abu
Walad
.

‘This name means “the father of the boy”,’ he told me, before waxing oddly geo-political. Clapping his hand to his breast pocket in a gesture which might have denoted fervent sincerity but must also, with hindsight, have activated a recording device, he began in a loud, clear voice: ‘Every time I take one of these biscuits, Madam, I think how this poor boy, South Yemen, has had so many fathers – Ottoman Istanbul, imperial London, Soviet Moscow, but now we have Sanaa –’

‘I know, I know,’ I interrupted him wearily, ‘There was only one father whom you truly loved, London. You feel like everyone else I’ve met here, that you were happiest as a British colony and now you bitterly regret your childish rebellion against us in the 1960s. And now, of course, you’ve never known a crueller father than Sanaa...’

‘Ah, Madam! You have read and understood our hearts like a mother reads the hearts of her children! You have come among us like Mary the mother of your Jesus, to suffer and to comfort and inspire us, to take South Yemen under your protecting English wing and raise us up to prosperity and peace again?’

‘Well, I suppose I have...’ I replied vaguely, helping myself to a third
Abu
Walad
.

‘I beg your pardon?’ he said, eagerly re-positioning himself well forward on his throne, invading my personal space, and slapping himself hard on in the area of his heart again, ‘I did not quite hear what you said, madam.’

‘I was agreeing that I feel I do have a role to play in the liberation of south Yemen from tyranny, yes,’ I said in the voice I always use when I’m making speeches – firmer than Celia Johnson’s in Brief Encounter but not as firm as Maggie Thatcher’s after her elocution lessons. Unsuspecting of any foul play, I was more interested in warming up for my forthcoming speech than in watching what I said to an old doorman, rather pleased to find that the word ‘tyranny’ was one I might usefully employ since it was not on my index of censored words.

‘Oh madam, yes! That is most certainly true!’ said the old boy, leaning back in his chair again. ‘And you tell us that your great, kind government is supporting all our efforts, your foreign office...?’ He was up close again, on the edge of his chair.

‘Naturally, I have official departmental and government backing...’

‘Of course, why did I ask?’ he said, slumping back again in relief and slipping his hand inside his jacket for what I took at the time to be an armpit scratch, but which I now realise must have de-activated the device he had secreted there.

It seemed to me then, and only then, that there was something too insinuatingly inquisitive about that old snake Munir. I decided I didn’t want to talk to him anymore and I had the perfect excuse not to because, what had started as a low background buzz was growing too loud for me to hear myself think, let alone listen to anyone else speak.

When Munir got up to open the glass doors leading to the balcony our ears were assaulted by what could have been a vastly amplified recording of day-to-day goings on in a bee hive. Stepping out onto the balcony for a look at the scene below, he returned a moment later, his beady old eyes as round as a pair of
Abu
Walads
: ‘There are as many people out there as there are stars in Allah’s sky!’ he declared, ‘Seiyun has not seen such a crowd since the Marxists’ compulsory celebration of the sixtieth anniversary of the October Bolshevik revolution in 1977!’

‘Are we talking hundreds or thousands?’

‘Madam, I am speaking of tens of thousands!’

My heart skipped a beat or two. A single broadcast text message had succeeded in convening a major political rally! I worried that a shortage of my signature head cloths might soon lead to scuffles. Sure enough, up rose some shouts and a roar, followed by a single gunshot. I was imagining that someone had lost a foot or even their life on account of a freebie Diana when Sheikh Ahmad and Aziz suddenly burst into the room, both of them wild-eyed, pale and sweating.

‘Rozzer!’ said Sheikh Ahmad, ‘Quick, please! There is no time to finish your tea. There are no more head cloths and people are becoming angry. You must be the first speaker because you will be the best surprise. They will be calm and peaceful to listen to you!’

I thoroughly enjoyed feeling that my beloved needed me, that I alone could help him out of that tight spot, that the mere sight of me could calm the storm of thousands, bring harmony where there’d been discord and order where there’d been chaos. Further inspired by Munir’s vision of me as a cross between a mother and an archangel I drew myself up to my full height and walked over to Sheikh Ahmad. ‘I’m ready,’ I murmured, standing on tiptoe to plant a light kiss and some Abu Walad crumbs with it among the spikes of shiny black hair above his right ear. It’s funny the things that stand out in one’s memory, isn’t it? I have no idea what Aziz was doing at the time or where Munir had got to, for example, but I can still see each of those crumbs clinging to those hair follicles above that ear and the surprised smile Sheikh Ahmad rewarded me with.